


Sewer Rat

by Piinutbutter



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, M/M, Origin Story, Poverty, Starvation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-03 00:12:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8689075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piinutbutter/pseuds/Piinutbutter
Summary: As Niles settles into a comfortable life with his lord, his mind grows clearer, and bits and pieces of his past begin to return to him.He really wishes they wouldn’t.





	1. Chapter 1

“Oh. That’s...unpleasant.”

Niles hummed a wordless agreement, staring at the unpleasant scene in one of the castle’s training fields. The corpse of a large dog was baking in the unusually grueling midday heat, the rare bright sun giving them a lovely view of the innards spilling out from its picked-open stomach. Noisy black birds fluttered around the body, enjoying the feast.

“Crows are such morbid creatures.” Leo mused.

“True.” Niles muttered. “But they can be helpful, sometimes.” 

“How so?” Leo walked past the weapons rack.

“Well, where there are scavengers, there must be food to scavenge. If you can follow a group of crows before they take everything for themselves, sometimes you can find a nice carcass to chow down on.”

The prince’s lip curled in distaste. “I can’t imagine a crow’s meal being anything pleasant.”

“It’s usually not. But a hungry child doesn’t need pleasant, he needs food.”

Leo lowered his voice as they made their way to the center of the field, far from the smell of the corpse. “I’m sorry, Niles.”

His butler waved it off. “The past is the past. Besides, I’ll have you know dead dog is actually rather tasty, once you can get it over a fire.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“But you want the big dogs,” he continued, gesturing enthusiastically, “With plenty of meat on their bones. None of those little yappy toys that rich women cart around to show they can afford to feed another mouth. Cats have the same problem. Taking off all that fur is a pain in the ass for such little edible payoff.”

“Niles.”

“Birds are in the middle. Annoying to pick clean, but they’re pretty tasty, and far more common than finding a whole dog or cat. But all of those are delicacies compared to the time when I had to eat worms.”

“Niles.” Leo squeezed his arm. “As fascinating and stomach-turning as this is, I would like to get some training done before we both suffer from heatstroke.”

“Right.” Niles bowed in apology. “Sorry, my lord. I got a bit caught up there.”

Leo smiled. “Don’t apologize.” Before Niles could respond, there was lightning crackling close to his ear. “Just do your best to kill me.”

He no longer accompanied Leo on missions of battle, but there was nothing that said he couldn’t help him train in the castle. The little prince was growing deadlier with his tomes with every passing day, and Niles had to pour every ounce of his concentration into dodging his attacks, in between trying to land some of his own.

So it was dangerous, how much the crows were distracting him. He tried to focus on predicting his prince’s next attack, but every time he heard one of their short, shrill cries, his head darted over to the animal’s carcass again. It was hypnotizing, the way they hopped lazily around the body, pecking and pecking and pecking at it. Niles couldn’t keep himself from staring. It made a strange feeling well in his stomach, one he couldn’t quite place. It felt almost like he was-

-hungry, and he was cold, and he was hurt, and he didn’t want to die.

For most of the years to come, Niles wouldn’t care whether he lived or died. He told himself he would never actively seek death - not consciously, at least - but when it approached, he wouldn’t try to run.

But now, Niles was a child who wanted nothing more than to live.

Winter was merciless. Nohr was already a cold place without the shifting seasons to make life harder on those without a home to shelter them from the deadly chill. Niles was young enough to still have some sort of conscience about theft. He tried to live off the scraps of waste that came from the rest of society, instead of taking the good parts for himself. It was taking a toll on his small body.

And he was small. The lack of proper nutrition had turned his bones brittle and stunted his growth. It felt like the strong gusts of freezing wind could pick him up and carry him away. He huddled inside his poor excuse for a coat in a narrow alley. The wind couldn’t reach him here. But the cold did, and the hunger did, and the hunger was worse.

Several days ago, Niles had worried about freezing to death. He’d tried to sneak into every abandoned-looking building that he could find, but it had always ended up with him getting run off by the inevitable squatters that had already claimed the shelters as their own. And, with all his energy dedicated to finding shelter, finding food fell to the wayside.

Niles was always starving, but tonight, in a dark, freezing alley, the reality hit him that he was about to die.

His body wasn’t working the way it should. For the last few days, he’d been constantly thirsty, no matter how much snow and ice he let melt in his mouth. His heartbeat was off. It was so, so hard to move his body. Between the pain and the dizziness, he couldn’t stand up to even try and find something to eat.

And the alley he was going to die in had already taken another of his kind.

The body at the end of the alley was a girl, Niles could tell that much. She couldn’t have been much older than him. Niles thought she might have been alive when he sat wordlessly down a few feet away from her, a couple days ago (was it a couple? maybe just one), but he couldn’t be sure. Reality was a hard thing to keep track of when your mind didn’t want to do anything but shut down.

Gods, he was so, so cold.

At least he had company. Well, more company than the dead girl. A small pack of crows had caught wind of the carrion, and they’d fluttered down into the alley to eat their own dinner. 

Niles was jealous of them.

But then, maybe this was a blessing in disguise. He couldn’t go look for food, so food had come to him. He just needed to reach out and catch it. He had a knife, one he’d found on the side of the road. It was a small, slightly bent, mostly dull thing spotted with rust, but it was a knife. He reached into his pocket slowly, carefully, both because of the pain the movement caused him, and to avoid startling the birds.

He was too hungry to afford that.

One of the crows hopped towards him. In tiny increments, only moving an inch or two with every movement, but it was coming his way.

It knew he would be next.

Gritting his teeth, Niles put all his energy into grabbing at the bird. He missed, _of course_ he missed, and the crow fluttered away, along with its friends.

No matter. There was still something he could eat.

Niles dragged himself over to the girl’s body, his knife held in one trembling hand. The cold air stabbed at his lungs when he took a deep breath and-

-cried out, stumbling forward as pain ripped through his shoulder.

“Niles!” Leo’s voice shocked him out of his memory. “Are you alright?”

Right. He’d been mock-fighting with the strongest mage he’d ever known, and he’d let himself drift off like an idiot.

“I’m fine, my lord.” He gasped, pressing a hand to the wound Leo’s spell had torn open on his shoulder. He pulled a vulnerary out of his pocket with the other hand, and went about patching himself up. “I was distracted. I apologize for my carelessness.”

Leo grabbed the vulnerary from him. “Let me. I did notice you were clumsier than usual.”

“Just, ah, thinking.”

“Well, maybe don’t think so much in the middle of a battle, next time.” Leo pulled his chin down, placed a quick kiss on his lips. “I don’t mind healing you a bit, but I don’t want to kill you on accident.”

“That implies you’re fast enough to kill me in the first place.” Niles teased, his cocky smile beginning to come back.

“You know I am.”

“Prove it. I promise I won’t think, this time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> / o v o / I said this universe wasn't over, and this is a project I've been picking at throughout the past month. j_marquis did not work with me on this story, however (and I fear my Leo writing just doesn't measure up to his, tragically).
> 
> As you can tell by the warnings, this is going to contain some dark stuff. It's all about the terrible things done to, by, and around Niles in his life, so be aware that it isn't going to be any form of sunshine and rainbows. I will add more tags as the story goes on. However, these are all flashbacks in the context of the story, so Niles already has his happy ending, in case you were worried about that. (I know I have a thing about sad endings. I just can't deal with 'em, y'all.)
> 
> Anyway, I do hope this is enjoyed by those of you who liked Court of Hounds! (Or new readers, welcome aboard!)


	2. Chapter 2

“They say that every scar tells a story.”

Niles’ eye opened at the comment, and the feeling of thin fingers ghosting over a cluster of the deepest scars on his back. Leo loved to explore his body, and Niles didn’t mind. Certainly not when he was naked and lying face-down on the prince’s bed, with said prince sitting on top of him and running his hands along his back as a prelude to much more pleasurable things.

“I’m curious.” Leo murmured. “About these.”

“Ah, those?” Niles shifted, and he had a moment of gratitude for the fact that Leo couldn’t see his face well. “Nasty, aren’t they? I’ve been in my fair share of rough battles. Some bastard happened to catch me off guard. Painful, but nothing out of the ordinary, on the battlefield.”

“Niles.” Leo sighed. “I’m not that naive. These are whip scars.”

“...So they are.” Niles admitted, quietly.

There was a pause. “I won’t force you to talk about them, but...”

“No, it’s fine.” Niles stared at the bedsheets, and reminded himself that he really needed to get better at tucking them in. They were crooked. “They’re nothing unusual. If anything, it was a good lesson for little Niles: Don’t get caught.”

He could hear the frown in his prince’s voice. “How old were you? This type of punishment isn’t supposed to be used on children. It’s in our laws.”

Niles laughed, only a little bitter. “I don’t even know how old I am now. But with all due respect, my lord, you should know better than to trust the authorities to follow their own rules.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

They’d had that exact exchange so many times. But until Leo stopped apologizing for parts of Niles’ past that he had no real control over, Niles refused to let him think that he should have to.

They were both quiet for a minute, and Niles let his eye close again as Leo’s finger traced the scars. His prince broke the silence first. 

“They’re beautiful.”

He smiled, just a small one. “Is that your royal decree?”

“Absolutely.”

The way Leo was lingering on the scars told Niles he still wanted to hear the full story behind them. All Niles had to do was say no, and his prince would never bother him about it again, but somehow, he didn’t want to say no.

He shifted beneath Leo’s warm weight and traced the folds of the top bedsheet with his fingertip. “Would you like to know about them?”

“If and only if you wish to share.”

He took a short breath in, and took a longer time breathing it out. “Well, I-”

-had survived the winter, by living off of food that made his chest hurt when he thought about it. But his world was looking up: The snow was melting, the sun was out, and Niles was bidding farewell to his conscience.

Maybe he would have kept it, had the scene not been so tempting. Everything was so perfect, every little detail of the situation falling into place to make Niles stray from the few rules that he still clung to on the knowledge that if he died, at least he would die a good person. 

(Liar. He was a coward who clung to life because he was afraid. He certainly didn't have anything else to live for.)

The setting: A bustling mid-day market in the heart of town. The worst of winter had uncurled its fist from around the place, and the vendors were celebrating with what amounted to an impromptu festival, each one excited to regain the profits that had dwindled during the coldest months, no doubt.

The characters: Obviously, there was Niles himself, barefoot and filthy and hiding at the edges of the streets so that he wasn’t trampled by passerby that had trained themselves not to look down, to avoid making eye contact with beggars like him. But, more importantly, there was the woman who ran a bread stall. Niles latched onto her appearance: She was short and fat, her cheeks round and rosy and her apron straining around her waist. She wasn’t hurting for food. She wouldn’t suffer if a tiny bit of her inventory went missing. She had probably never known hunger a day in her life.

The object of interest: A small, round, fresh loaf of bread, sitting on the very corner of the stall’s counter, placed primly on a twee pink cloth. Niles could smell it, from where he was standing. Perhaps not that loaf in particular, but all of the bread. It smelled like warmth and happiness and home and all of those things Niles didn’t have. But mostly, as his aching stomach reminded him, it smelled like food.

He needed it.

Niles tried to talk himself out of it: He didn’t need it. He only wanted it. There were other ways to feed himself. He didn’t need to do this.

But, no. No, he absolutely needed this very particular loaf of bread. Nothing else would do.

So he waited, and he watched. The actual act was so easy, once he worked up the courage to stride confidently out of the alley and blend into the crowd. He was just another street urchin, walking with everyone else, stopping by the bread stall when the vendor’s back was turned, casually brushing the loaf with his hand, sticking his hands in his pockets because after all there was still a bit of a chill in the air, walking with everyone else, passing a few other stalls before ducking back into a different alley.

His heart was beating out of his chest, even as he ate the bread faster than he had eaten anything in his life, aiming to destroy any incriminating evidence. Someone must have noticed him. This was wrong, and everyone knew he was doing something wrong, and something terrible would happen to him.

But nothing did. The afternoon turned into evening which turned into night, and no one had come for him. And even though he’d eaten the loaf of bread quickly enough to make himself sick, it had been the greatest thing he’d ever tasted.

From then on, the progression was simple. It all revolved around food, at first: Learn how to steal food. Learn how to pickpocket the people on the street to get money to buy more food.

Then there was the night when Niles, for the first time in his life, had enough money to buy a very, very small meal for himself, and ended up with a little money left over. That, of course, got him thinking about all the other things you could get with money. Clothes, clothes were a big one. Maybe some medicine to help with all of the aches and pains that he’d learned to live with? Medicine was expensive, but all that meant was that Niles had to aim bigger.

He aimed too big.

The noblewoman had been asking for pickpockets, walking around with her pouch just tied to her waist like that, bouncing ostentatiously against her hip with every step she took. She was too busy chatting with her butler to even notice the child brushing just beside her, reaching out with small, on-their-way-to-nimble fingers to cut the flimsy ribbon that connected her to her money.

Or so he thought.

He wasn’t as small and fragile as he’d once been - his body had gladly taken the sudden steady influx of food and used it to fuel a belated growth spurt - but Niles felt very young and very vulnerable with the noblewoman’s hand nearly crushing his bony wrist, her beady eyes glaring down at him.

She cried out for the authorities, and even without the butler to corroborate her claim, the guards would have taken Niles away anyway. Niles saw it in the way they looked at him, the simultaneous apathy and disdain in their faces.

Young and uneducated as he was, Niles knew nothing about the way Nohr’s systems of justice were supposed to be run. He just assumed it was normal when they-

“-dragged me, kicking and screaming...Leo?”

His prince had been listening quietly all through his story, but now he had reached for Niles’ hands, squeezing them tightly in his own.

“It’s alright. I can guess the rest for myself.” His thumb pressed against Niles’ knuckles. “I’m sorry I pried.”

Niles craned his neck to smile at him. Really, the memory wasn’t that bad, compared to some that he didn’t want to think about. It was painful, but that was all. Physical pain was a fleeting thing, in the scheme of things. “Aww, and I was just getting into the storyteller mood. I could add some dramatic elements of fiction into the tale, if you like. Have a dragon swoop in and rescue me at the last minute?”

Leo’s lips might have curled, just a bit. “Or a handsome prince.”

“Ooh, excellent suggestion, my lord. So, as I was on my way to meet my fate, a dashing and handsome prince from a far off land happened to be riding into town, that day...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who forgot to update last week? It's me. I forgot to update last week. Oops.


End file.
